The transfer, executed on 20 September 2026, is understood to be the largest founder-to-ESOP donation by percentage of share capital in the history of the Hong Kong stock market. It is not a disposal for cash. No shares are being sold into the market; all of them are being placed into a vehicle whose sole economic purpose is to reward and retain employees.

Crucially, the arrangement is being funded entirely from the founder's personal shareholding. It involves no issuance of new shares and therefore no dilution to existing shareholders, and it consumes no company capital — no cash, no treasury reserves, no debt. The 120,682,000 shares are being transferred at nil consideration from the founder's own account to the employee incentive platform, meaning the cost of motivating and retaining the core team is borne by the founder, not by public investors or the Company's balance sheet.

Six months of exponential growth

The transfer comes as Duiba's AI short-drama business enters a phase of compounding growth. On Douyin's native end, cumulative playback from June to August rose 178%. In July and August, Duiba ranked top three across the entire industry for two consecutive months, and was the only leading player to sustain month-on-month growth above 50% in both months.

Seven years, zero founder selling

Duiba listed on the Main Board of The Stock Exchange of Hong Kong on 7 May 2019. According to HKEX disclosure records, Mr. Chen Xiaoliang, the founder and controlling shareholder, voluntarily extended the post-IPO lock-up to three years at the time of listing and, from the IPO through the date of the transfer, has never reduced his personal beneficial shareholding.

The 20 September arrangement is therefore the first change in the founder's ownership structure in the seven years since listing — and its direction is unambiguously inward.

"This is the clearest possible signal that the controlling shareholder is backing the next chapter of the business rather than exiting it," a Company spokesperson said. "The shares go to an ESOP vehicle, not to the market."

After completion, Xiaoliang Holding will remain the controlling shareholder with approximately 31.01%, down from 42.21%. Kewei Holding, which currently holds only 0.17%, will hold approximately 11.38%.

A war chest for AI talent

Kewei Holding has undertaken to introduce new incentive schemes with vesting and lock-up arrangements under the Company's equity incentive management measures. The stated focus is AI businesses, with AI short drama at the centre. Existing and future awards will be subject to service and performance conditions, aligning key employees with long-term shareholder value.

The timing is deliberate. The AI short-drama sector is expanding rapidly, but hits remain scarce: fewer than 0.5% of new AI short dramas on Douyin surpass 100 million views. In that environment, the constraint on growth is not capital — it is the ability to retain writers, algorithm engineers, producers and commercialisation talent capable of turning AI tooling into repeatable hits.

By moving roughly 11% of the Company into a locked-up, performance-vested incentive pool, Duiba is, in effect, converting founder ownership into collective engineering and creative capacity.

The AI bet is already compounding

Duiba was founded in 2014, is headquartered in Hangzhou and listed on HKEX in May 2019. It built its early business on points-and-benefits SaaS and internet advertising, serving more than 16,000 enterprise clients. In late 2025 it moved strategically into AI short drama, building a full-stack pipeline spanning AI scriptwriting, AI production and AI distribution — what the Company describes as the industrialised, scaled monetisation of AI-generated content.

Financials: revenue and gross profit rising in tandem

The Company's 2026 interim results show that the growth is reaching the income statement, not merely the traffic ledger.

For the six months ended 30 June 2026:

The Group's traditional SaaS and advertising operations contributed nearly RMB 70 million of gross profit in the first half and are expected to continue providing earnings support, while AI short drama has become the dominant revenue driver.

Asset quality also appears intact. The Company reported net assets of RMB 1.175 billion, cash and short-term wealth management products of approximately RMB 400 million, and prepayments of RMB 345 million, largely related to the bank instant-discount business and recyclable into working capital.

Why the transfer matters now

Three things make the move more than a symbolic gesture.

First, it is structurally a gift, not a sale. The nil-consideration transfer means the founder receives no cash. For a controlling shareholder who has not sold a single share in seven years, the decision moves equity from a personal account to a collective one.

Second, it arrives at a moment of operational inflection. Douyin rankings, view-count trajectories and the first-half revenue split all point in the same direction: AI short drama has become the core business, and locking talent into it via vesting and lock-ups addresses the binding constraint on its next phase.

Third, it creates a credible incentive currency. An ESOP pool of roughly 11.38% is large enough to be material for hires and retention, yet structured with vesting and lock-ups that prevent it from becoming a short-term payout.

The road ahead: overseas expansion and the short drama alliance business

Duiba's second-half outlook rests on two tracks: AI short-drama expansion and a stable SaaS and advertising base.

On the global front, the Company is accelerating its overseas push into a market it estimates at US$4 billion in 2026, up 390% year on year, with management expecting overseas operations to begin contributing revenue in the fourth quarter.

Domestically, it is pursuing a strategy of the short drama alliance business,expanding to tens of thousands of app media clients via SDK access. Its distribution footprint extends beyond Toutiao and Hongguo to Tencent, Kuaishou, Baidu and more than 20 mid-tier platforms.

This is not a founder exit. It is a founder-to-employee capital allocation: a seven-year holder converting personal ownership into collective incentive capacity at precisely the moment Duiba's AI short-drama business is compounding on both the view-count and income-statement lines.